Memoirs from Fairyland

Another untitled-main-Android-Project count brings us to the ninth chapter-- starting on the tenth soon-- and 26,488 words. I am very pleased. I would be more pleased if I didn't still have such a long ways to go. How can something be enjoyable and a trial all at once? Why is writing like this? Is it because it takes so long?

Hopefully, all continues going well. I'm getting to a very good part, which means that writers' block should be hitting in another chapter or two-- every time I get to the part I've been looking forward to, minor case of writers' block occurs. It's a curse. I need to slam out another couple of short stories, too, and finish getting everything ready for Future Writing Plans. The summer is only so long and I'm ambitious!

Aside from that, I have a Lindsey-fic planned that I'm going to be starting tonight (hopefully) as a reward-to-self for Android Project progress. And also: Android Project main fic needs name. Srsly. I'm SO BAD at titling things, though. Maybe if I stare at titles of other things for a while...? Sigh.

Have changed journal layout; was bored. I wish I could find a better layout for the theme I wanted (I.E. androids) but I couldn't! *sobs* it will have to do... Unfortunately not for long, because I don't like it very much.

Edit: June 6th - I was right. Couldn't stand it.

The main fic of my Android Project (so far untitled) just hit seven chapters and just over 20,000 words. Applause is required.

I still have about 4x this amount left before it's done.

*dies*

Dang it! I'm trying to work on Sunrise, Sunset but I can't remember anything that's going on!!! I'm going to have to reread the entire thing! WHY DIDN'T I KEEP PLOT NOTES????

So I wrote a whole bunch of drabbles a bit ago for BtVS and AtS. If you've ever seen/heard of/etc either series even vaguely, they'll probably work for you. More info is below in the author notes. They're linked to from ats_btvs_fanfic.

Title: BtVS and AtS Drabbles #1
Author: Wings of a Wolf
Rating: G to PG
Pairing(s)/Character(s):  Angel/Buffy, Spike/Dru, Wesley/Fred, Spike/Buffy, Lindsey, Angel, Spike
Disclaimer: Neither Angel the Series nor Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to me; they belong to their creators, writers, production companies, and the media. And, specifically, to Joss. Because Joss rocks.
Author Notes/Summary: These are a series of character drabbles just to get me into the feel of the fandom for a couple of upcoming fics, so they're all fairly gen and/or canon pairings. They're completely canon compliant except for one of the Spike drabbles, which complies with something Joss said in an interview once. So read and enjoy, if you so choose. They're all fairly short.

( Read more... )

Thank the gods, the semester is almost OVER! Just a couple more days... I predict writing, and hopefully lots of it. If I don't post something in a couple of days, hit me. The Wereyorkies need a short sequel and I need to poke at androids and fairies again (not in the same story, thank you very much... though that would be pretty friggin' awesome).

In some slightly related news, I'm going to be at Alpha Sci Fi/Fantasy/Horror writing workshop in Pittsburgh this July and then Confluence after! Only twenty people get to go... *feels privileged and slightly gloaty* Meanwhile, apartment hunting and worrying whether my financial aid is even remotely going to cover my living expenses. Debt, here I come: the sad thing is, you welcome me with open arms.

I just got into Ithaca College!!! I just need to get the letters of rejection or acceptance into Elmira and Cornell, then I'll be able to decide where to transfer to come Fall! Or rather, come May, since that's the due date for going or not. Ithaca will give me a $16,000 per year scholarship for academic excellence too, if I decide to go there, so AWESOME!!!!

Yes, I did the Wereyorkies. I kid you not. It's all aggybird's fault. Blame her for it. Anybody who catches the Doctor Who reference gets a cookie.

( All Bark and No Bite )

I have decided that sci fi is evil. This requires so much freaking work!  I have a book list of things that I need to research that's expensive. The library doesn't have them for some stupid reason and they're in the twenty-five to thirty dollar range a book; there are, for the record, five books. Their topics range from computer science to managing a hospital to the history of Rome and I need MONEY! It's not like these are "on a whim" books. I need the stupid things! I already have one book that I need to use for it and I ordered one of them (so the list technically numbered seven at one point) and one of the books I may be able to find a suitable replacement for, but the ones that I don't have are the ones that I really need. Damn my need to have some measure of realism!

*sighs heavily* 

Androids, you better appreciate this.

Stole meme from broken_moons. Could not resist. ^ _ ~ The four at the end are, as stated by instructions, mine.

( Read more... )

My adorable little laptop only took a day to get here!!! It is pretty and awesome and the batteries never have to be freaking recharged. Well, they do, but only after a long amount of time. Very pleasing. Best of all-- no more time wasting while on campus! I can actually DO the stuff I need to do... provided I can link into their weird wireless system. I may post pictures of the new computer, just because its so dang adorable. Anyway, though, in the queue for next week and the remaining days of this week are the following:

Queue

4-6 chapters of the androids
2 parts of "Following the Foxfire"
Wereyorkie story-- don't even ask; you probably don't want to know
Edit (forgot this one): Something with a "dark glass" theme

I'm gettin' me a new computer! Or rather, I'm getting me the most portable, neat little writing device in history: an Acer Aspire One netbook in pretty sapphire blue. With a freaking 6-cell battery! I should have it 3-5 days, so I'll probably be squealing (or squalling) over it then. I lurvs it so far, but ours is as-of-yet an internet romance, so who knows.

My spring break starts within a couple days; I'm hoping to make it a writing break even though a couple of my online classes are being awful and continuing on through the break. WTF, I ask you? I've been writing sci fi lately over most else. Not just "a dabble here, a dabble there" sci fi-- honest to god, descended from the realms of Firefly and Doctor Who, sci fi. Can you write in a genre you don't even really like? The Android Project has taken over my soooooul. I hate working on two things at once, but my androids and "Following the Foxfire" are insisting.

On the bright side, I'm gonna get to write them on cute new computer!!!

Okay, so the typos/whatever were a bit less in "Dance With the Devil" versus "Fairytales Slashed": there were seven typos, one missed period, and (I think) one case of a capitalization that should-have-been. That being said...

Holy crap!!! Go Megan Derr!! I actually hadn't read "Dance With the Devil" yet; the formatting had me confused, though I had no trouble with it in hard copy-- but it was damn good, and I don't say that lightly. The cases in it were excellent; due to the repetition of a certain line that the main character, Chris, and his coworkers used, I really felt like it was a detective novel. It almost had a Sherlock Holmes feel to me, but not. It's hard to explain. It was a detective novel, of course, but that repetition cinched it for me. The romance between Chris and Sable was stellar, as was the relationship between Doug and Zach. I loved Phillipa, too! She reminded me of Cordy from AtS and BtVS, actually. It was all very lightly done, very perfect, and good gods, Megan, you did it again! Despite the editing mishaps (pleeeeease fix!) I would willingly, readily, and immediately buy any novel that you put out. On that note, if you need another editor, I would pay you to let me do it, because the typos are driving me nuts.

Highly recommended; only ten bucks; go forth and buy!

After today I should be able to add another two books to my reading list-- I ordered the new books by Megan Derr, "Dance With the Devil" and "Midnight". Her "Fairytales Slashed" had some issues, unfortunately. I kept wincing at the editing mistakes... words that were repeated, punctuation, etc, but they couldn't keep me from enjoying it too much! I just kept wanting to edit. I have a very strange problem; I love editing. Anyway, hopefully these two won't have those problems! They're in the local post office and will hopefully come with the mail.

Provided I can ever figure out what community I want to post the link in, another part in the android story I put out a while ago is going to be up. The funny thing is, it didn't start out belonging to this series, but when I rewrote it it suddenly changed series', or rather, combined them. Which means that I need to do some editing on the one I wrote before to clean it up a bit.

So I've been having an issue making time to write lately. Avoiding doing homework has been taking up a whole bunch of my time, and since it's essentially worthless trolling of the internet, you'd think that I could write in this time. So here it is:


Things To Write

• Two chapters of "Following the Foxfire" slated for February. Four for every following month, but on vacations I want four in a week. I'm feeling prolific.
• Two new parts of "the Android Project" a month. It's easy to write and freaking fun.
• Finish "Sunrise, Sunset" this year. I hope.
• Get "The Virtue of Patience, or Good Things Come to Those Who Wait", "A Worthy Pursuit", "The Ways We Converse", and maybe "I Heard the Church Bells Toll" ready for submitting to magazines. I totally have a back-log of short stories that are dying to be published.

Hopefully, I'll actually manage to get some of this done among the hundreds of pages my professors expect me to read a week.

I just made a run to the Salvation Army here, which has a better (and cheaper!) selection than any of the used book stores around and managed to accumulate five books - including a $29.99 copy of a D&D book - all for only $5.40. Deal! Except now my reading list has grown up to my head, so I wanted to make a list of that which I need to read.

I Must Finish Reading...

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce
Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

I Want to Read...

Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Our Lady of Pain by Marion Chesney
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
The Tailor's Daughter by Janice Graham
Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
The Turn of the Screw (and Other Short Novels) by Henry James
The Soul Eater by Mike Resnick

And I Might As Well Throw These In...

His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Books I'm Rereading

The Hitchhiker's Guide series by Douglas Adams
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (<3)
The Discworld series (to #7) by Terry Pratchett

I've apparently been on a sci fi kick lately, which is weird because I don't even really like sci fi! Speaking on that subject, I may have a bit of a sci fi contribution later today...

( Finished Books )

It's official: Prince of Tennis has corrupted me beyond my wildest dreams. I just watched the Australian Open and was held in thrall by it. I only stopped because it's late and there was some Lance Armstrong thing I didn't feel like sitting through. But seriously? Holy crap! Tennis is interesting. Whodathunkit?

I changed my LJ layout... not sure I like it yet. I may change back. In "personal nanowrimo" news, I may extend it a week because I contracted the Demonic Cold From Hell, but again, not sure. Jeez. Can't make a decision tonight. Oh well.

The Slants are awesome. I can't remember how I heard about them, probably from Pandora, but anyway, they impress me. They're an "all-Asian" band, excluding that one member (Gaijin-- this makes me laugh). The music itself reminds me almost of NIN because both are very electronic-based, but it's different-- more techno and upbeat; less broody. The lyrics are very poetic and they're arranged very well-- one of them is an excerpt from a book by Haruki Murakami. It's incredible. I hope they come out with a new CD soon. I'm not done listening to this one yet, of course, but I just hope they make another one! And that it doesn't suck, like so many second CDs do. Anyway, end fangirl moment and back to staring at the wordpad and wondering if I should just start typing. ^ _ ~

Okay, so I've slowed a bit. A momentary set back. I had to go to visit family (loooooong ride) and do a bunch of stuff over the weekend. I have to write 2700 words a day, but I can probably do it. I don't have anything more scheduled for this week, so it should theoretically work.

...sigh. The things I put myself through, and then I foresee editing in my future. Lots and lots of editing. After lots more writing, because I somehow doubt that my end count will actually end the story. Oddly, this seems like tons of fun. Weird.

Today's progress (so far): 21,058/42,658. 21,112/42,658. 3,454 words of progress in a week. Ick. That's not even half done. I'll try to catch up tomorrow.

I have achieved further progress, with no snags currently in sight.  I have officially passed the 20,000 words mark, thank everything bright and good (and quite a few things that aren't).

Today's progress (so far): 20,555/42,658. A total of 2,897 in two days after an entire month of no work!

And a small snippet, bearing in mind that nothing is edited yet:
 

( The last section of Part Nine... )

I came into the NaNoWriMo late for this year and therefore only got halfway through, which was very annoying but somewhat satisfying in what a rush it was to be able to just not edit because there wouldn't be enough time for it. But I was going to keep going on with what I was working on because of the sheer fun level of it.

And then there were finals, and Christmas, and there's a vacation and I don't want to waste that by actually working, and... You get the idea. My writing kept getting put off. So I decided to do a personal, mini NaNoWriMo: 25,000 words in two weeks, starting today (Dec 29) and ending on January 12th. Maybe I'll get myself a prize at the end, depending on how motivated I end up needing to be and how much I seem to want to shirk... but it's fun so far.

So here's the launch: 17,658 words at starting. End goal is a total of 42,658; if I get on a roll I may reach what it should have been for the actual NaNoWriMo. That means, at starting, 17,658/42,558.

Today's progress (so far): 18,804/42,658, or 1,246 words. 19,499/42,658, or 1,841 words.

I feel kind of pleased with myself, considering I haven't worked on it since NaNoWriMo ended!